S/O--Do you close your kids' bedroom doors at night?

[Chris in VA]

Just curious because of the "brainstorm a solution" thread about child needing a cold room to sleep.

 

I've always closed the kids' doors--mostly because of fire safety. Oo, scratch that--I may recall leaving them propped when they were really small...

 

What do you do and why?

[KrissiK]

No, never. When I was a kid I always slept with the door open. Closing it scared me to death. I needed to see the lights on in the other room and hear my parents' voices or I was too scared to fall asleep. I guess I projected that on my kids. We keep their doors open.

[Janeway]

Always closed, but just because people come and go, going to bed and getting up at different times. 

[Tap]

I prefer to close them for fire safety (and household noise keeping them awake), but at certain stages in life the kids wanted them open.  It left it up to them, but encouraged them to have them closed.  

Edited October 18, 2017 by Tap

[KungFuPanda]

My daughter always needed total darkness to sleep, so her door was always closed. My son likes the hall light I I need to hear him in the night, so his was always open.

[EKS]

Closed because it just makes sense (different bedtimes, etc) and because of fire safety.

[medawyn]

Always closed.  Quieter for them, quieter for me.  Darker for them = better sleep.

 

My door is open, but that's because we lost part of the baby monitor and I've been too lazy to replace.  It's harder to hear the baby with two closed doors.  And the cat comes and goes, and I'm not getting up 27 times a night to let her in and out  :lol:

 

 

[lynn]

Every child was different. Dd prefers closed doors, my boys wanted their doors open

[Guest]

Always closed -- fire safety.

[lllll]

nm

Edited October 23, 2017 by Catheryn

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

All our doors are ajar 1-2 inches.  I would close them completely if they closed quietly, but in order to get a bedroom door shut in this apartment, you have to really yank on it, and it makes a huge amount of noise.  There are two hours between when the youngest and when the oldest go to bed, but I guess the little guy is used to the noise, as he has the bottom bunk in the bedroom that is basically 2 feet from the epicenter of the house... and still gets to sleep within 15 minutes.  

[kewb]

Always cracked half an inch. I have a fear of not being able to get out or get to my children if there is an emergency.

My adult children now have their doors closed most of the way, but not latched in deference to my irrational fear.

Plus, if you have pets closed doors are an invitation. They must be able to get to the other side.

Edited October 18, 2017 by kewb

[MistyMountain]

I have always kept them closed for fire safety. It also makes it easier at night when the kids are asleep but the adults are still awake with lights on and noise. I also did not want the animals sleeping in their bedrooms especially when they were little.

[maize]

No.

 

One room doesn't even have a door. I think the hinges came off the door frame because the holes are all stripped out and I haven't figured out how to fix that.

 

I can't stand sleeping with a closed door though, it gets too stuffy and I feel like I can't breathe.

[Starr]

Ours were never closed tightly, just pulled to a couple of inches.

[EMS83]

Closed for privacy of everyone and so they are not tempted to come ask Mommy for things just because they can see her.

 

ETA: I still prop them when it thunders, though.  :D

Edited October 18, 2017 by CES2005

[MBM]

Always closed so that their rooms were completely dark and quiet but with a light they could easily turn on if necessary.

[MistyMountain]

When my kids went through brief phases of wanting it open I kept it ajar a little while they were falling asleep but closed it all the way before bed and told them I would because it is safer in a fire. The time difference between choking smoke and heat getting into the room can be the difference between them making it out and getting rescued. With all the smoke and heat you cannot always get a chance to get to their bedroom. Fires move fast.

Edited October 18, 2017 by MistyMountain

[bettyandbob]

always closed. fire safety. 

[J-rap]

No, but not for fire safety.  (Though that's a good reason!)

 

Everyone just slept better when they couldn't hear sounds from other people moving around, etc.  Also, we liked to keep the hall light on at night, and if the doors were kept open, the light shined into the rooms too brightly.  We all prefer to sleep in as dark a room as possible.

[carriede]

Closed doors here.

 

There's a season when I leave it ajar for the newest toddler-out-of-the-crib who can't open doors yet. But I'll close it when I put him to bed, and then open it again when I go to bed so he can come out if he needs to.

 

My bedroom door stays open during the night so it's easier for the kids to get to us.

[Joyofsixreboot]

My girls only have curtains in the attic and the boys are in a door less basement so no doors to shut.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

We have almost always closed doors here as well, for safety and because youngest DD is easily distractible and would never, ever sleep if she could hear everything that was going on outside her room. Our walls seem to be paper thin, and it's a small house, with one short main hallway and the living room on the other side of her bedroom wall. We did go through a short phase for each kid when we left their doors open a crack so they could have the reassurance of the little bit of noise and light, but when they outgrew that, we started closing doors again.  

[SKL]

I close them so the kids can get the most undisturbed sleep possible.

 

There was a short time when one kid asked me to leave her door a little open, so I did, but that is not the norm here.

 

I personally feel a lot more secure having the door (to my bedroom) shut.  I'd lock it too if I didn't have kids who might need me in the night.  :P

[OrganicJen]

I always close them all the way for fire safety.

[Rachel]

We use to close the doors until I went to bed, then I would open them. The heat and a/c don't work as well in our house with closed doors.

 

Then we got kittens and I didn't want them roaming at night, so they sleep in the kids rooms with the door closed. Once the cats get older we will likely go back to opening the doors when I go to bed.

[ErinE]

I prefer closed for fire safety and sleep, but my two littles want their door open so I leave it slightly cracked. Everyone else sleeps with the door closed.

[Rachel]

Just out of curiosity, we have cheap contractor grade doors that seem hollow. Do they really provide fire protection? Maybe we need to upgrade our bedroom doors. I know the fire doors in commercial buildings are generally quite heavy duty.

[KungFuPanda]

I'm trying to imagine how much noise my dog would make if we closed the doors and prevented his nightly patrols. He always wigs out long before a smoke detector goes off, so I figure we'd best let his paranoia protect us all. You can't burn popcorn in this house without him freaking out over it :-/

[solascriptura]

They are always closed. I do open them during the summer months, before I go to bed for increased air circulation.

[Arcadia]

We don’t close bedroom doors. We grew up with shared bedrooms as do our parents and probably grandparents. Leaving the doors open makes it easier for going to the toilet and also for evacuation purposes.

 

Our condo complex fire alarm has gone off many times in the ten years we stayed here. It’s just easier to run out of the main door when there are no closed doors to open.

 

None of our interior doors have fire protection though, only the main door has to meet safety standards.

 

Just out of curiosity, we have cheap contractor grade doors that seem hollow. Do they really provide fire protection? Maybe we need to upgrade our bedroom doors.

Only our main door has to meet fire safety standards required of condominiums. So the interior doors are all useless in a fire.

[OrganicJen]

Just out of curiosity, we have cheap contractor grade doors that seem hollow. Do they really provide fire protection? Maybe we need to upgrade our bedroom doors. I know the fire doors in commercial buildings are generally quite heavy duty.

Yes. Anything that keeps the smoke out even a few extra minutes can save a life.

[Carrie12345]

We never do, and there are 3 firefighters in my house.  We know we're supposed to.  I couldn't give you a good reason for why we don't.
(We don't always close ours, either.)

[MrsMommy]

Always open. They like them open, I like the air to circulate in the house, and it's the only way they can all listen to a CD or whatever at bedtime, because the player/radio is in our school room, which all the bedroom open into.

 

Also, I now feel really stupid, because I have never been told to close doors for fire safety. And with the way our house is set up, having them closed seems like more of a hazard to me, because I think people would be more likely to get trapped.

[OrganicJen]

The fire safely issue isn't as much for the flames as the smoke...it's the smoke that kills more people. I wouldn't be alive today had my cheap hollow core bedroom door not been closed when I had a fire. It blocked just enough of the smoke long enough to give me time for my family to get a ladder to my window and get me out.

[Guest]

Closed for fire safety reasons... and to be consistent with mom&dad's closed bedroom door, which is closed for marital privacy reasons.

[Guest]

Forever a debate in our house between DH and myself. I like my own bedroom door closed and I generally always tended to close the kids' doors. I think it's some sort of "denning" instinct. It feels safer to me; sleeping is so vulnerable.

 

DH likes tem open because he's Joe Mechanical Guy and he says the air handler does not circulate the air properly if all the doors are closed. The sensors read differently in rooms where doors are closed vs. when they are open which makes some rooms cold and others hot.

 

When I go to bed (before DH - he snores), I prop my door at half-way as a compromise. When he comes to bed, he removes my prop (sometimes complete with attitude) and lets the door go completely open. But I hope I don't wake up and start thinking about it open because then I will be restless for an hour.

[73349]

.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Carolina Wren

[Arcadia]

Also, I now feel really stupid, because I have never been told to close doors for fire safety. And with the way our house is set up, having them closed seems like more of a hazard to me, because I think people would be more likely to get trapped.

This is a good website to understand why it is good to close doors for fire safety.

https://closeyourdoor.org

 

Can your family members climb out of windows?

 

I have always live in high rise apartments. So what I was taught was if the main door is on fire, to wet a big bath/beach towel and run through the main door to get out of the building as fast as possible. To take off any nylon windbreakers (jackets) because the heat would cause the windbreaker to melt onto your skin causing severe burns.

[Tess in the Burbs]

we closed the door when they were little.  Mostly to keep them in the room lol.  Shut out noise from the tv.  Nothing major.  I would open a crack when I went to bed and checked on them.  Now, we all sleep with a cracked door.  This house makes a lot of noise and when it wakes me I like being able to see shadows from the light.  The outdoor light at the front door illuminates the hallway, so if anyone were breaking in I would see the shadows LOL.  I know, crazy, but dh's paranoid about that stuff.  It's rubbed off on me.  I can also see when a kid gets up in the night and not just freak out someone is walking down the hall.  My kids have left the door more open, but mostly we crack doors.  Rarely do we close them b/c the room gets too cold then. 

[Carrie12345]

This is a good website to understand why it is good to close doors for fire safety.

https://closeyourdoor.org

 

 

I really like your link. I don't think most people realize there's a huge difference between burn times of yore and today.  We glamorize heroic rescues, but our local (volunteer) department's response time can't beat an active fire.  Kids HAVE to be taught how to get out and where to go.

[OrganicJen]

I really like your link. I don't think most people realize there's a huge difference between burn times of yore and today. We glamorize heroic rescues, but our local (volunteer) department's response time can't beat an active fire. Kids HAVE to be taught how to get out and where to go.

This is so true. The first thing we have amways done in a new home is go over fire safety drills and then we do them periodically. I'm really glad we do this because a lot of questions have come up that we could address. We discovered that my son had intended to rescue all the animals so we really had to take the time to educate him about why he had to just get outside to the meeting point.

[wendyroo]

Always closed.

 

 - Fire safety

 - Undisturbed sleep for everyone

 - Keeping littles in their rooms

 - Keeping bigs from staying awake eavesdropping on adults

 - Allowing me to turn on the hallway and bathroom lights at will to do chores after the kids' bedtime

 - Keeping the nursery warmer longer; it is perpetually cold, so I run a space heater in there for a while before bedtime

 

Wendy

 

 

[Ailaena]

For a few years, my daughter had a cat that was happiest being separated, but other than that, one of the first things I usually do in a house is remove all of the doors (except bathroom, obv). I'll have to contemplate if my attitude will change based on fire safety since closed doors freak me out (for no reason, really).

 

Plus, doors take up space where I could have books :p

 

 

ETA: it took me a couple of minutes, but I realized that there's no way I could sleep when I can't hear what's going on in the rest of the house, so no door on my room, at least!

Edited October 18, 2017 by Ailaena

[Zinnia]

Always closed, because of fire safety.

[SparklyUnicorn]

I allow them to choose for themselves.  One always closes it and one rarely closes it.

 

 

[Seeking Squirrels]

I prefer closed once we're all in bed for fire safety and because DH gets up very early and I don't want the kids to wake up to him in and out of the bathroom and getting ready. Or for him to wake up the dog who would then wake up the kids! But their doors are usually open as they're falling asleep and I close them on my way to bed. For about a month this July I had to leave them open all night, though. We have a swamp cooler instead of A/C, so without open doors and windows there is no cool air. It just got way too hot even with turning it up all the way, directed to their rooms for an hour before bed. It would still heat up too much in the night so I had to start leaving all of our doors open all night. They're back to being closed now that it's cooled off. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

I never heard of the fire safety thing before.  Huh....

 

 

[Mommyof1]

Open, DD4 scared of the dark and has some trouble with door knobs.

[Guest]

I know it is safer to close doors, but I grew up with open doors, and we did the same when our son was young.  About mid-teens, though, the doors got shut.